


A faded Boy

by middlemarch



Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lost Child, Vignette, based on info gleaned from a gif, fill-in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 03:16:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13355346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: A loss that could not be borne.





	A faded Boy

Jane wouldn’t talk about it and he didn’t see how he could make her. Or that he should. There was no one to ask—his parents had died several years ago and his older sister had emigrated to Canada just after her marriage. He’d never been comfortable with Jane’s parents and both her brothers were fighting. The doctor had laid a hand on his shoulder, muttered “Damn shame. You’ll try again” and picked up his satchel and left. Jane had not looked up and had kept stroking the shawl in her lap. Paul had stood there and wished for something to move them to the next minute.

She’d picked the name, Gerald Edmund, and he’d been happy to let her. Happy to see her content, even though the flat was still drafty and the furniture worn. The basket had been nearly new and she’d made every item in the layette herself, squinting to embroider the matinee jacket cuffs with blue thread. She’d wanted a boy and she’d got one and then lost him. Paul suspected she’d rather the baby had lived and his father had been the one lost, a War hero she would have told their son about, fussing with his collar and tie as he left for school, keeping the medals polished in their case. 

He had said hardly anything at all and he thought it was right. Except when he heard her swallowing her cries in the night, turned away from him. Or when he saw her eyes in the morning, all their light gone out, somehow getting dimmer when the kettle shrilled and he saw she listened for the baby’s cry. He’d tried, repeated the doctor’s words as best he could and had not let it hurt too much when she snapped, “I don’t want another.” She didn’t mean it or she wouldn’t. Or she did and he’d have to accept it if he lived.

Jane had loved the baby, her little love, her bonny boy she’d called him. Paul had called him small Gerald, which didn’t quite fit, or the baby. He’d had silky dark hair, lashes as delicate as a girl’s, and he squalled when he wanted his bottle or his nappy changed. Paul hadn’t known him long enough to love him, which felt like shame, but he missed him. He missed the weight of the baby on his shoulder and he missed the dreams he’d begun to entertain, of trips to the sea-side, collection of shells and conkers, a pair of bright dark eyes looking up at him and knowing him.

They never spoke of him. Not before he left again, not when he came home. Perhaps Mr. Foyle knew, he knew everything else, but no one else did and Paul left it that way. There wasn’t a name for what he was, a father without a son, a husband whose wife did not want him but would not let him go. He didn’t believe in ghosts or angels. He wished there was something more left than a spool of blue thread.

**Author's Note:**

> A keen-eyed Foyle's War fan spotted this in a gif from The German Woman in an image of newsprint, an article on Paul Milner including the following "Shortly, he will join his wife, baby son on three weeks leave. The child was born just one month before his father’s flight.”
> 
> Well, we never hear about this again, I don't think, so I set to addressing that. The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
